Tag Archives: government

Progressive-Democrats and Religious Freedom

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Progressive-Democrats want to vastly curtail, if not eliminate altogether, religious freedoms. You recall those—the core part of our 1st Amendment.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….

The Secular Democrats of America PAC, an arm of the Progressive-Democrat movement, counts the Trump administration’s actions to advance religious freedom a national security threat. Moving radically beyond merely eliminating our national motto because it dares mention God, this crowd denounces our national heritage and our belief in ourselves as a Christian nation (which is a distortion of theirs; we actually hold ourselves to be a Judeo-Christian nation).

In a 28-page list of “recommendations” this crowd sent to Progressive-Democrat President-Elect Joe Biden, they included the following:

  • withhold federal funds from any faith-based organization perceived as discriminatory on the basis of religion
  • repeal non-medical exemptions based on religious grounds
  • mandate inclusion of non-religious advisors at all faith-based gatherings at the White House
  • Biden (apparently personally) should discourage politicians from using the words “God” and “country” while speaking

So, this part of the Progressive-Democratic Party wants Government to tell religious organizations they are not allowed to practice their religion and receive the same government funding other organizations get. Government must heavily deprecate religious practices.

This crowd also insists on dictating what speech an elected official might use and who he must have in his meetings: “elected official” because there’s no reason to believe this demand, once acceded to, won’t spread far from the White House.

Biden has chosen not to comment on these recommendations. His considered silence smacks of agreement with it. If Republicans don’t hold the Senate, it’ll be a long four years of destruction.

Pocket Vetoing

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Consider this scenario: in 2022, Republicans sweep to veto-proof majorities in both the House and Senate. (I agree, but work with me here.)

Let’s say that one of the bills that Republican Congress passes—late in the year after much debate—is either a tax reduction bill that permanently reduces even further both corporate and personal income taxes or (especially after much debate) a spending cut bill that cuts actual spending (not just slows increases) and that includes material reform of Social Security and Medicare.

Let’s say further that one of those bills is presented to a President Joe Biden right before Congress adjourns (not merely recesses) for the year-end holidays, an adjournment that will last for more than 10 days (as even many Congressional recesses do).

Biden doesn’t like the bill, never-minding its general popularity among Americans, or that it was passed by a veto-proof Congress. He can’t veto it outright, or it will simply be passed over his veto. So he pocket vetoes it—he takes no action at all.

Here’s what Article 1, Section 7 of our Constitution says:

If any Bill shall not be returned by the President within ten Days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the Same shall be a Law, in like Manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their Adjournment prevent its Return, in which Case it shall not be a Law.

Leo Fisher has argued that such a “veto” wouldn’t hold up in court (in fact, the courts have never ruled directly on the matter) because this would be an absolute veto—Congress having no opportunity to attempt to override it as otherwise specified in our Constitution—and so would go directly against the Constitution’s authors’ intent. This, he intimates, flows from the otherwise not-signing for 10 days making the bill law, or the veto of the bill within those 10 days with an explicit Congressional override making it law that are provided for in the immediately prior sentences:

If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated…. If after such Reconsideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the Bill, it shall be sent, together with the Objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds of that House, it shall become a Law.

Fisher’s argument fails because of that categorical and uncaveated clause: unless the Congress by their Adjournment prevent its Return, in which Case it shall not be a Law. That’s precisely an absolute veto, and it was written into our Constitution by its authors.

Thus, it strikes me that the matter is quite clear on two grounds (and yes, I’m aware of conflicting Supreme Court rulings that hint at the matter). One is that when Congress is adjourned, it is explicitly not in session, as opposed to merely taking a break for a bit, which is what a recess is. When Congress is not in session, it cannot receive anything—it’s simply not available. That decision creates the condition for an absolute veto.

The other ground is this: it’s easy for Congress to remain in session for the extra period needed to consume those 10 days within which a President must explicitly veto a bill and return the veto to Congress. By adjourning during those 10 days and not returning before the 10 days are expired, Congress is consciously creating the condition for a pocket—absolute—veto.

Clinton-2 vs Obama-3

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That’s the hope expressed by Phil Gramm and Mike Solon in their Tuesday op-ed in The Wall Street Journal.

By electing a divided government, Americans may get what they appear to want: a Biden first term that’s more like Bill Clinton’s second term than a third term for Barack Obama.

That is in no way a done deal. The current situation is not at all comparable to the Clinton situation. Biden’s handlers have no inclination whatsoever to move off their far-left ideology, much less the far-left policies they intend for enacting that ideology.

Nor have they any willingness to compromise, as Ocasio-Cortez has made blatantly clear.

The best we can hope for is a Republican-majority Senate and enough party unity to say “No” for four years.

‘Course a gridlocked government isn’t a bad thing.

WaPo Contempt

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The Washington Post is at it again. Abolish the electoral college, its editors demand. And they thereby display the same contempt for ordinary Americans, our Constitution, and our federal republic structure as did Herb Croly, Woodrow Wilson, and more recently Ezra Klein, Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer, and Nancy Pelosi, among a long list of today’s Leftists and Progressive-Democrats.

The electoral college, whatever virtues it may have had for the Founding Fathers, is no longer tenable for American democracy.

After all,

Right now, our presidential elections are conducted by 51 separate authorities, each with its own rules on registration, mail-in balloting and more. Each state counts its own ballots, and each decides when recounts are needed.

You bet. That’s right there in that pesky Constitution, because federation. That’s where the individual States, by design, are nearly on a par with the central government. That’s so a far away, remote government cannot rule the roost with its one-size-fits-all diktats. Those pesky States just keep getting in the way of Progressive-Democrats’ need to implement their Know Better policies. Absolute control from the center would make that so much more convenient. Here’s Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the need for a Progressive-Democrat majority, reigning from DC:

[Jake Tapper, interviewing Ocasio-Cortez]: Are you going to work with more moderate Senate Republicans to try to pass something in the House that can get through the Senate?
[Ocasio-Cortez]: Well, I’m going to be spending my next couple of months doing everything that I can to extend help and offer support…that we secure a Democratic Senate majority, so that we don’t have to negotiate in that way[.]

Back to WaPo‘s need to clear away the obstacles to Leftist control of the promise of American life.

Small states already have disproportionate clout in our government because of the Senate, in which Wyoming’s fewer than 600,000 residents have as much representation as California’s 39.5 million.

With the Electoral College having far more popular representation than the Senate, surely, these wondrous exemplars of what passes for journalism will be demanding proportional representation in the Senate, too. Truly equal representation gives the dinky States, those locales too small to be worthy of notice, ‘way too much representation.

Some Editors Don’t Get It

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The Wall Street Journal‘s Editorial Board, in its Friday edition, ran a piece strongly decrying the Left’s and their Progressive-Democratic Party’s shrill attacks on Justice Sam Alito for his effrontery in decrying their attacks on freedom of speech and freedom of religion. In those personages’ eyes, Alito behaved despicably in two ways: defending those two freedoms, and any others, is far too political a thing for any mere Justice to do. And he did it in front of that dastardly bastion of individual liberty, the Federalist Society.

Then the editors deprecated their otherwise excellent piece with this, near the end of their editorial:

The American judiciary, in its best tradition, balances majoritarian demands with the constitutional rights of weaker and less politically powerful groups, whether they are socialist or conservative.

This is a very large misunderstanding. The American judiciary, in its best tradition—if only rarely honored—doesn’t balance anything. It acts on the text of the Constitution and the statute(s) before it in a case.

Any balancing is a political action legitimately carried out only by the political branches of our American government, the members of which are elected—and replaced—by our nation’s sovereign political aggregation, We the People.